Heart attack at 44 a real wake-up call

Jo-Anne Swanson had a heart attack at 44. She's now a spokesperson for the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

Photograph by: Jo-Anne Swanson
, The Gazette

MONTREAL — Jo-Anne Swanson manages her stress level quite vigilantly.

She exercises and meditates every day, and practises yoga.

That’s because in 2005, at the age of 44, she suffered a heart attack that very nearly claimed her life.

And she’s worked hard ever since, most recently as a spokesperson for the Heart and Stroke Foundation’s Heart Truth campaign, as an ambassador for people everywhere to take care of their health and to manage stress.

Swanson said she knows for sure that her heart attack was a result of stress.

“I was working 80 to 90 hours a week,” the upbeat mother of two told me last week. “I was in a very high pressure job, travelling a lot, not eating properly and it took its toll.”

And she firmly believes a guardian angel was looking out for her that morning.

Swanson was on a business trip to Toronto, and took her customary morning bath. “Usually, I always take a very hot, hot, bath, always,” but that morning she opted for a lukewarm bath for reasons she still doesn’t quite understand. “I absolutely never do that.” But doctors later told her that had she taken her usual hot bath, she would most likely have passed out and who knows what would have happened.

At that time, Swanson was a light smoker, had given up her usual exercise routine due to her workload (she says she was active her whole life and never had weight issues).

On the morning of the attack, she said she didn’t feel well, she had a pain in her chest and opted for the bath and couple of Advil. When the pain lessened, she met a colleague, a nurse, for her morning coffee and cigarette. Neither the coffee nor the cigarette “felt right, I couldn’t drink coffee or smoke, I knew something was wrong.”

A few hours later, she told her colleague to call 911. She was feeling much worse and could barely breathe.

When the paramedic arrived and gave her a quick cardiogram, he assured her it wasn’t her heart, and because the pain had subsided a bit, asked if she still wanted to go to the hospital. She told them she did. “I felt inside that something was still very wrong.”

And it was.

En route to the hospital, her pain went from “on a scale of one to 10 to a 15.”

Things moved quickly at the hospital. “I kept hearing them say, “Time is tissue, time is tissue,” which she says meant every second counts. Swanson said she suffered 40 per cent damage to her heart.

“Doctors told me if I hadn’t made it to the hospital, I would have been dead in two hours.”

Scary stuff, especially since her mother had passed away of a heart attack nine months previously.

“That’s where symptoms can vary so much,” she told me. “My mother had pains in her abdomen. Now I tell everyone if it hurts anywhere between your nose and your belly button, go to the hospital!”

Swanson had an angiogram and a blood clot was dissolved. She was released from the hospital several days later.

The mother of two children, a son, 23 at the time and a daughter, 20, she said it nearly broke her heart when she finally spoke to her children and her husband later that night.

“My daughter asked me if I was going to die,” she said. “I told her if I didn’t die this morning, I won’t die tonight.”

Swanson said that after that life-changing event, she took her health in her hands in a big way. She cut way back on work (they hired three people to help her), she quit smoking, began to eat regularly and no longer skipped meals, and eliminated junk food completely.

And she began to work out three days a week at first at a local Curves in Gatineau, eventually working out up to five days a week.

Fitness became her new passion. She took a nutrition certification, became certified as a group fitness instructor and eventually bought the Curves location where it all started.

“I love it to much,” she told me enthusiastically. So much so, she bought a second location in December 2010 and quit her job.

When she was released from the hospital, she was given 14 medications. As a result of the healthy changes she has made, she now takes only two.

“I’ve found a healthy balance between work and life” she explained. “Now I want to help people understand the risk factors and discuss symptoms and to know their bodies and to listen to their bodies and to know when something is wrong.” She’s certainly glad she did.

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